I've been wondering about character death. I am sort of an indulgent GM, because I work very hard on writing stories for the PCs and in the end I'm as attached to them as the players are.
I've resolved to run Paizo's Rise of the Rune Lords AP, taking advantage of my personal distance from the story. I'm looking forward to the additional risk in deadly traps and powerful enemies with the potential to kill the PCs.
There are a variety of stances on the issue of PC death, and I'd like to hear what other people think. If the obituary threads are any indication, there are some cold-hearted GMs out there, maybe they can give me lessons. :)
In the interest of starting the discussion, here's a little excerpt from Raph Koster's "The Theory of Fun":
By and large, people don’t play games because of the stories. The stories that wrap the games are usually side dishes for the brain. For one thing, it’s damn rare to see a game story written by an actual writer. As a result, they are usually around the high-school level of literary sophistication at best.For another, since the games are generally about power, control, and those other primitive things, the stories tend to be so as well. This means they tend to be power fantasies. That’s generally considered to be a pretty juvenile sort of story.
The stories in most video games serve the same purpose as calling the über-checker a “king.” It adds interesting shading to the game but the game at its core is unchanged.
Remember - my background is as a writer, so this actually pisses me off. Story deserves better treatment than that.
Games are not stories. It is interesting to make the comparison, though:
- Games tend to be experiential teaching. Stories teach vicariously.
- Games are good at objectification. Stories are good at empathy.
- Games tend to quantize, reduce, and classify. Stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle distinctions.
- Games are external - they are about people’s actions. Stories (good ones, anyway) are internal - they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.
In both cases, when they are good, you can come back to them repeatedly and keep learning something new. But we never speak of fully mastering a good story.
The whole chapter can be read here.
So, with that to inspire you, under what circumstances to you as a GM allow or cause PC death? (barring the obvious situation of an annoying player needing to be put down)
PCs should die when they do something really stupid.
For example, I was running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and they were exploring an area and ran into magical darkness, and they had not run into magical darkness before, but they kept going anyway, with no scouting, no anything. Blam, they ran into an ambush. Out of 6 PCs, I outright killed 4, and 1 escaped with an almost dead (-8 stabilized) companion. Ended that campaign, oh well.
What should *not* kill PCs is random lousy die rolls on their part, and random great die rolls on my part as the DM. That is why I always roll behind my screen except in *very* unusual circumstances.
-- david
Papa.DRB
I am primarily a PC, and never DM, just to let you know my PoV.
I want my PC to die whenever my PC would die.
If that means an anticlimactic trap or an unfortunate crit by an otherwise minor monster, then so be it.
While I *don't want my pc to die* at all, I NEED the possibility of death to exist- otherwise the game isn't fun. If the PC's cruise through the AP knowing only "bosses" have a chance to kill them, then to me that would be a very un-fun experience.
PC's can crit monsters and kill 'em in 1-2 hits. I see no reason why fortunate monsters (or unlucky rolls by the PC) shouldn't afford the same opportunity.
My advice would be for you, as a DM, to roll monster saves, and monster attacks/damage in the open. Let the PC's know the same rules apply to them as do the monsters. No fudging stuff. If you want the PC's to be able to "fudge" death, then introduce Heroic Points or some such to help avoid it.
Remember that except at very low levels, Pc's have resurrection magic in some form or other at their disposal. Even though characters die, there's no reason for them to stay that way unless you force it, or they decide to let the character be dead.
-S
I'm primarily a DM myself but when I play I don't need or want to be coddled. If I roll badly and die, so be it, if the DM rolls well and I die, so be it. I might not like it at the moment but I accept it as the price of playing a game that is supposed to be about heroes violently opposing violent evildoers not a game of candyland where we cry like 5yr old girls when our characters don't "win".
If characters can't die when they are supposed to...ie. when they are foolish, have bad luck, find themselves in an unwinnable situation, etc. why don't we put the dice away and just tell warm and fuzzy stories to each other?
I'm no meat grinder DM, my games often have more role playing than combat, but my players can expect that their enemies will try their best to kill them they same way I expect my players to do their best to kill the NPCs, monsters, or whatever that are attempting to kill them.
If I might add...I do allow hero/action points in my games because I run a low-mid magic level game and resurrection is rare. I don't want my PCs to die, but I just don't see the point of a game that lionizes violence and then removes the ultimate consequence of violence from the protagonists. Anyone who lives by the sword is risking getting cut.
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Selgard's points are crucial.
Death - how permanent is it in your game?
Game vs Story telling - ie roll players vs role players
Every game group is different and these things have been talked to death. However in my group (we lean more to roleplayers) stupid descisions are punished but death (permanent death) is decided between the DM and the PC. I give them options as the blood drains out of them and if they say "yeah my bad - I want to move onto another character" then towards the light they go. We prefer it that way and death is pretty Marvel in our game anyway (who knows when and where the charcter will come back). We are adults and professional writers and actors so group story telling is pretty easy and most of the fun for us.
Actually in my current Ebberon game there was a prophecy about a character saving the world. He died (out of bad desisionc and player choice). The pieces of the puzzle fell together for the PCs later and they realised that the world is on a downward spiral because of the characters death. A stolen body, cults and what have you all now add to the apocalyptic cliffhanger of a game. Suffice to say death can be a plot in itself.
I have fudged in the past and luckily my players never knew it. They would have my head if they thought that the game was rigged either in their favor or against them. There is something very satisfying in allowing victory or defeat to be determined by your skill and the probabilities of the dice.
I think in situations, where the characters have clear knowledge that they are atempting something, that they might very likely not survive and still belive the risk is worth it for what they try to accomplish it, it's not only okay to have them die when they fail, but almost required.
If characters are willing to possibly sacrifice themselves for their goal, the character shield has to be removed. Else it would make the sacrifice worthless and, depending on the type of playing and the campaign, make the whole archievements of the characters meaningless.
"Let me just check this door. - You're dead" or "You are ambushed. You are dead." are simply not fun for anybody since the players didn't knew about the challange and had a way to decide to avoid it. But if they decide to risk it, there has to be a risk involved. (I guess in a D&D game, exploring monster-infested caves or challenging the local dark lord is not considered mortaly dangerous by itself. ^^)
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As a GM, the PC's should die when I say so. XD
Kidding. I've had it both ways as a player. I've had GM's that coddled, and GM's that treat the game like a 'me vs. them' scenario. Personally speaking, I tend to run high-magic campaigns, so resurrections/raises/restorations are usually available, although for an exorbitant price that usually leads to a new adventure in itself. So I don't generally fudge a random (dice roll) death unless it would really adversely affect the story I have planned to tell.
I think this is a great subject to expound on, too, if the OP doesn't mind my saying so... Assume you've killed a character (or petrified, or otherwise made incapable of participation,) as a GM what do you do to keep the player involved? Do you have them bring in another character immediately, no matter the setting? Do you give them a pre-fabricated character that fits the setting to run until their own is able to act again?
I am usually a GM in my group. We play year long campaigns, or longer (one on hold at the moment is at 3 years)
I roll behind a screen. This way, I control the flow of the game. Yes, I do occasionally fudge the dice roll, or decide that the BBG has more HP than listed, etc...
My players and myself find it anti-climatic when the culmination of a months long real time campaign ends with a single PC hit.
I will kill PCs when they do stupid things. If a character does a suicidally heroic action (like hold back a horde at a choke point - to allow others to escape), I am inclined to make it a memorable moment.
I do not allow the dice to dictate to me, but usually go with what is rolled.
I have had kobolds take down a mid level fully armored paladin in the past (the rest of the party made sure that the was no coup-de-grace performed), so my players know that any opponent has the chance of taking them out.
For those wondering, the kobolds were two in each square, and used aid-another in teams of 6, so that single one hitting usually got an extra +10 to hit, with kobolds moving up when others dropped.
Having been a player as well as a GM (off and on) for nearly thirty years (ack! well, I did start in Junior High) I have run player death a number of ways. In the old days of rolling a character up in five minutes and you're ready to play again, death count was high, and the dice rolled as they may. Everyone accepted it, and you could run through some six characters in a play session easy if the DM loved traps as much as most of us did.
Later, as we started making people to play (backgrounds and meat instead of just stats on paper), deaths still happened, but magic was always made plentiful to return the dead to the loving arms of their comrades, no matter how bizarrely we acted to get the body home (we chopped up a body once to fit into a belt of many pouches, nice one foot cubes ::brrrrr::).
These days, with how much time me and my group put into creating interesting folks to play, death is not common, but near death and resource drain is. Three of us alternate GMing, and our method is to adjust rolls as need be behind the anonymity of the screen. Those playing don't know when it's being done, the threat of death is there, spells and magic and other resources are used up some days at a fiersome rate, but we all have fun as we limp home with one to two hit points left to our name, all spells gone, and the fear of that last random monster always there until we're locked safely away in our home base :)
I don't find it "fun" to have a monster make a truly lucky roll and eat the character that is doing everything right, but can't roll damage to save their life ... we've all had days of cursed dice.
If, on the other hand, you've described the situation clearly, you know the players know what they're about to try is not only risky, but one step shy of suicidal, the roll is nearly impossible to make and they still want to try -- then death becomes them :)
This is all for my home group, of course. Whenever I've run a game at a convention, especially tournaments, the dice fall where they may.
YMMV, but the game should be fun for all. If the players want the risk to be real and hairy, then let the dice fall as they will. If they want to be heroes in a cinematic way, you don't see Indy killed by a bad roll ten minutes into the film :) That's when you "fudge" in favor of fun.
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I am primarily a PC, and never DM, just to let you know my PoV.
I want my PC to die whenever my PC would die.
If that means an anticlimactic trap or an unfortunate crit by an otherwise minor monster, then so be it.While I *don't want my pc to die* at all, I NEED the possibility of death to exist- otherwise the game isn't fun. If the PC's cruise through the AP knowing only "bosses" have a chance to kill them, then to me that would be a very un-fun experience.
PC's can crit monsters and kill 'em in 1-2 hits. I see no reason why fortunate monsters (or unlucky rolls by the PC) shouldn't afford the same opportunity.
My advice would be for you, as a DM, to roll monster saves, and monster attacks/damage in the open. Let the PC's know the same rules apply to them as do the monsters. No fudging stuff. If you want the PC's to be able to "fudge" death, then introduce Heroic Points or some such to help avoid it.
Remember that except at very low levels, Pc's have resurrection magic in some form or other at their disposal. Even though characters die, there's no reason for them to stay that way unless you force it, or they decide to let the character be dead.
-S
That is exactly how I run my game. I make all rolls except spot/listen/stuff the PCs may not know about, in the open. Example-I had a gigantic pit trap that had 2 20'x40'trapdoors that flopped down, smashing into the wall of pit and dropping the PCs 50' down. The doors reset with most of the party in the pit. The Dwarf Barbarian decides to climb the walls and start trying to wreck the stone piano hinge of the on trapdoor with a crowbar. Meanwhile up above one of the untrapped party heads across the room and through the other doorway, triggering the trap. The trapdoors flop open(solid stone 2' thick, 20'x40'blocks) and crush the Barbarian with 20d6 damage. He would've survived if he had swigged a potion after the pit damage and subsequent fight with some undead, but he didn't even though I mentioned that it was painful to climb with the injuries he had.
I like, as a player and a DM, to know that death can happen anytime, especially if a mistake is made.I believe we would game well together Selgard.
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PC death should happen by player action or random chance but never by GM action (unless it has been worked out with the player ahead of time for story purposes) but any situation is valid to flatline a PC. In the last 10 years of so of GMing I have lost 9 PCs. Three to heroic sacrifice, four to dumb luck and two to suicide. Yea, suicide. One decided to join her lost love in death and the other (oddly same player, I gotta stop picking on her) was driven mad by haunting dreams that kept coming true.
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PC death should happen by player action or random chance but never by GM action (unless it has been worked out with the player ahead of time for story purposes) but any situation is valid to flatline a PC. In the last 10 years of so of GMing I have lost 9 PCs. Three to heroic sacrifice, four to dumb luck and two to suicide. Yea, suicide. One decided to join her lost love in death and the other (oddly same player, I gotta stop picking on her) was driven mad by haunting dreams that kept coming true.
My very first character ended up killing himself because he was *bored*. He was a fighter/mage who had a spell of time travel, mastery over modern day weapons, and adamantine body parts.
Okay, this was in the early 80s when we kids thought all this was cool. Cool to talk about. Boring to play.
More recently, a player's paladin was swarmed by a horde of goblins. While the little beasties were able to get in a few lucky shots, their primary purpose was to hold the paladin in place while Zhent archers picked the paladin off from afar. The poor paladin didn't last three rounds - being the victim of every ranged attack in the place. (That session was nearly a total party kill, with three survivors: two clerics who took turns healing themselves and a tiefling bard who hasted, went invisible, fled and hid out until the cavalry arrived.)
Of course, not long after that, three characters (2 new ones and the bard) died on failed saves versus a Bodak. Unfortunately, by then one of the clerics was dead and the other had suffered enough negative levels to lose her raise dead spell.
Oh, those were the days.
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I kill 'em when the fates decide and roll openly for all to see. Most times this happens because they do something very silly. In our last AoW game two weeks ago our improved invis wizard decided to start a fight on a second front in the spire of long shadows. Any one who played that knows that's a bad idea.
He was practically toast as were most of his mates and it was only some good strategy that finally saved them (and a very lucky roll to spot the invisible body of the wizard to drag him to safety I might add)
I use death as many posters above have. Resurrection and raise dead are easily available to my characters at their current level, so death isn't permanent unless they choose. I don't do the whole negative level or xp loss, rather I put a 1 game penalty on the player (-2 for hits, and saves). A vitae penalty if you will for all those MMORPers out there. This is enough to be annoying for a short while but not enough to make a player scrap the character.
We still use instant death magic as well and nothing increases the fear factor of a fight like one of those babies going off. We killed a Psion in my AoW game with a destruction spell in the session before the scenario above. The tension was palpable after that and that fight will be sticking in peoples memories for a long time. No one likes to lose a character, however the threat of losing one makes you play better.
Cheers
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First off, I have to disagree with the author's assessment (or at least the assessment applied to PnP RPGs, and maybe a few CRPGs). I bet a heck of a lot of Vampire players would disagree too. I'm not saying RPGs are ALL about story, but my games are always story driven - but the story is written as the game is played. Sure, there are players who don't care or actively dislike story in RPGs, but the point is they CAN be about story.
Disagreement aside, characters die when they are killed. Plain and simple. Many checks are in place to minimize the impact of such an event (feats, spells, action points, etc) but if death is permanent it is time to make a new character to join the story. Case in point, in a game I played in the party cleric, with us from 1st to 3rd level over several months of play, was killed with a brutal critical from a goblin with a great axe. There was nothing to do, it dropped him from healthy to death in one hit, it was a fluke - but he stayed dead. The party engraved his name on a marker in the ruined town, buried him with ceremony at his church, and my character felt misplaced guilt about the death, carrying around his holy symbol despite hating religion, eventually joining an order of monks in an effort to improve himself. If the DM had fudged the damage roll, we would have missed out on that great STORY.
I agree with Vaughan 100%. Kill your PC's how, when, and wherever you may. Sadly, I've only greased 12 PC's in one day. I can't equal Vaughan's staggering total...
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I agree with all that is said above (Mr. Vaughan, that's amazing), but there's another circumstance that comes to mind, though I'll admit it's a little silly.
Players playing other characters can=amusing PC death.
(Spoilers below)
I ran Maure Castle a while back, and we had a Pixie sorcerer played by a good friend of mine. They were in the third level and fighting Mr. Big demon, and the rest of the team thought it would be good to send the naturally invisible pixie in to have a look around. Mr. Big Demon, however, had see invisibility, and chomped our pixie into a small snack, and was thusly annihilated in the next session.
But then my friend returned, we told the story, and he was, rightly so, pissed. It still gets him every time.
But yeah, I think that character death through the action, inaction or just plain evilness of other players can be a) amusing, b) annoying to the original player, but most c) a very viable way to kill characters or send them on a berserker rage and then just have them stand there next time (see The Gamers).
As a player, I kill off own PCs whenever it would be tragic, or glorious, or would advance the story. I'd much rather a character be remembered for how he died than to be shunted off into some kind of fantasy retirement home.
As DM, I kill of characters whenever the players are stupid. And whenever they're playing "Spire of Long Shadows." Two TPK's in there, and the third group finally made it through, casting speak with dead on the bodies of their fallen predecessors to find out how to avoid joining them. Great stuff.
I usually do not kill the PCs myself. That is unless it IMO moves the campaign in an interesting direction. When you generally don't kill them, a death becomes significant
Well I did kill a PC once...when I was about 15yrs old.
My best friend was being a jerk and was playing an extremely disruptive character who was killing NPCs and attacking other PCs and no matter how much I warned him to stop he just kept acting up.
Well I had bought the AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide (still an excellent book IMO) and had rules for lightning strikes...heh...heh...heh. Well a "random" lightning storm popped up and just happen to strike Drogar the Barbarian and he was fried to a crisp. He still doesn't know I wacked his guy and that was 22yrs ago.
Yuo need the threat of death to make the game exciting. As a DM PCs die as the chips fall although a truely unfortunate character will be 'missed' when I roll a natural 20. And as a player, it seems to suck greatly when...
DM: "The dragon's claw scythes into you" [roll of dice] "How many hp do you have?"
Story-centric PC: "I have 12 hp".
DM: "You take 11 points of damage"
...for the fifth time in a session.
Cheers
Mark
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For the longest time I tried not to kill characters, but as the Campaign advanced and they got better saves and gear they just steamed rolled over their enemies. Thus I became jaded, but known to tell a decent story.
Now I try reasonable no holds barred. I keep a mental running total of everyone's current hp on average. I actually been good about 80% of the time too. In the end though I try tone down insane dice rolls for damage, you know when you roll an 8d6 fireball and you get 5 6's and 3 5's and everyone in the thing has a crappy reflex save and are at half, or less, hitpoints. this does backfire as I disintigrated a player in FotSG. It was a good death but one that could have been dealt with if the player had a better roll.
In the end be honest with your players and try to be fair. So if one person gets the kiddie gloves then all of them do, and the reverse is true as well. If feelings get hurt just remind them it is only a game of risk vs reward. Sometimes the high risk does break a few tempters of fate.
I am primarily a PC, and never DM, just to let you know my PoV.
I want my PC to die whenever my PC would die.
If that means an anticlimactic trap or an unfortunate crit by an otherwise minor monster, then so be it.
I'm both a DM and a PC and I concur wholeheartedly. If I find out a DM is fudging to save my character for the sake of the story (or any other reason) it ruins the entire game. I'd probably quit gaming with that DM. If there's no risk of dying except in the most unlikely of circumstances, the game ceases to be fun for me.
I also don't write a story as a DM. I write a game world and game characters. The PCs, NPCs, and the dice write the story
Quoted for truth.
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Im in a minority I see. I don't believe in killing player characters.
In the 33 years of playing Ive gone through the gamut of methods...early on characters were knocked off all the time, and id have players die and start rolling up another to inser when there was a break.
Then to the less likely...and now to the almost non-existence.
My preference is, if a player 'dies' in game, they are knocked out and receive a physical issue that must be overcome some how....examples Ive used over the years...
Player has a Rogue/Wizard that died in a fight with a 'flock of crows' in 2nd Ed (the scenes from the movie birds flash through anyones mind?)
I had him lose an eye that caused -2 to all roles for 1 level, or until he found a manner to regenerate the eye.
The player loved it and when the time came he ffound a way to get his eye back, he chose not to and started wearing a patch instead.
Another time a player had a wizard that was 'killed' by an Ogre...in the descriptor for the combat I said,"The Ogre grabs you and tears your left arm from your body, leaving you bloody and your vision swimming as you fall to the ground...."
(I have a house rule that 1st through 3rd level spells can be cast one handed..anything above needs both) The player went on a quest to find a gnome that could make a 'mechanical hand' for him...
To me, the possibility for life altering damage is a better role playing tool than death. Occasionally Ill get a character that wants to be the hero and die to save the others, then I allow it.
I base it on if the player has made comments that he's is prepared to let his character die, or hes bored with the character...but as long as a player doesnt want his character to die...then Id rather not derail the game for a mechanic.
My view on a role playing game is more like the players are the protagonists ina fantasy novel and we are writing the story together....
My view on a role playing game is more like the players are the protagonists in a fantasy novel and we are writing the story together....
Evidently not a George R.R. Martin novel, then, or you'd be killing off the protagonists as fast as you could introduce new ones!
...then Id rather not derail the game for a mechanic.
My view on a role playing game is more like the players are the protagonists in a fantasy novel and we are writing the story together....
This is an interesting topic, and I don't want you to take my comments as argumentative - they aren't, I just pose some thoughts for discussion.
The fantasy novel analogy works, I think, but I get bored reading a fantasy novel if I know the author doesn't ever put the characters in real danger. When a DM is making certain my character can't die, I feel like the DM is doing the same thing. I don't care for it, personally.
Also, having DMed and played roughly the same amount time you have (a handful of years less) I've never had the game get "derailed" over character death. Maybe this is because character death is fairly common and we've been able to just let the game flow regardless. What do you mean by derail?
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Steerpike- No offense taken, It is a good discussion.
When I build a campaign I use the PC's to develop many of the sub-plots. Typically I ask the players to do as much character development back story as they'd care to...and use that. If the player spends a bit more effort developing his character, having a hosrt mortality rate works counter to that.
By derailing I mean- If you start a 1st level campaign, character mortality is very chancy at low levels when a single sword strike can kill a character.
Here's an example: I was a player in a recent campaign where we all created 1st level characters. The DM wasnt very experienced, though he knew the rules well. One player lost his character EVERY game. He would show up to the next game with a new character. he wasn't an abrasive player. He wasn't a trouble player. he was a risk taker and fairly unlucky.
we had 5 players to start...soon we were down to 4...and then down to 3. Th game came to a screching way before average time, because the mortality rate was high.
Thats what I mean.
If a player spends more than a half hour creating his character, and the character is more than just a set of numbers....The player has vested a portion of himself in the character.
No way, In my opinion, should that characters possible death, be because of a couple dice rolls.
Oh and remember thtere is a risk involved in my games, its just less oriented to death and more towards other things that will bring about more role playing opportunities.
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When should PCs die? What a great question to discuss!
I love reading the replies. They are as varied as gaming groups are.
I guess the best answer is when ever it suits that particular group's biases. :)
In our group we try to avoid PC death due to stupid stuff, like drowning due to die rolls. But if after a suitable number of tries that just keep failing, there comes a time when the DM says "I gave you every chance I could but the fates had determined you would drown today."
On the other hand, when the PC (me) does something stupid- like jump into the sea wearing full plate armor with a swim of 8 and forgets the double swim check penalty, there aren't many chances at all.
During combat, we approach it such that combat is lethal, no matter how insignificant the opponent. The dice have come up crossbones for you and that is all there is. Most of the time there is enough time to get to the PC before they actually die. We do not use coup de grace against PCs unless there is a major reason for it. But when my wife was crited (I was NOT GM so I was blameless) and scored well over 20+ of her available HP it was a one shot you are dead dead dead situation. She was not pleased but was able to make a better character for the game.
Just want to chime in a bit... I don't have much to add apart from I agree with the folks that say "let the dice fall as they may." Just be equal... let the bad die rolls "ruin" those perfectly planned ambushes just as they cause PC death.
I use Andy Collins' house rule:
http://www.andycollins.net/Theories/dying.htm
It's a bit more forgiving and I find it keeps more party consistency (i.e., players are more likely to want their PCs raised rather than starting a new one).
Thanks, Dread.
I agree that it is interesting. I've had the opposite experience with keeping players in the game. In one game I play in, PCs have probably a 70-80% mortality rate starting off. People die all the time. Could be because you didn't something stupid. Could be because the dice aren't going your way. Could be because the world is a dangerous place and it sucks to be you.
The game is also heavy RP and story oriented, so that aspect hasn't been hindered either. Always interesting to see how different groups interact. If I spend half an hour rolling a character, I really don't have a lot of emotional ties to that specific character yet. Maybe that's because the life span tends to be limited. As time goes on, I develop more of a connection with my characters. When one of the long-term ones dies it's always a disappointment in the sense that I won't have that character anymore, but it isn't disappointing in the sense that it makes me take a dim view of the game. I re-roll and I'm off to battling the high-mortality starting character scenario once again.
When I DM, I don't like placing "artificial" constraints on my world. I put artificial in quotes because we are talking about a fantasy game. But in my world, dragons live where they live, and if a level one character decides to wander over to where they live he's probably going to be dead. I won't fudge it, and the dragon won't suspiciously be gone when the level 1 character gets there. That said, I won't force the level 1 character to go there, either.
By way of example for a TPK I had. Relatively low level party exploring some vast underground dwelling now inhabited by goblins. After capturing one of the goblins, they learn that down a side passage there is a fearsome creature. The goblins explains what it looks like, draw a picture in the dirt, whatever. It's clear it is a Beholder. The party didn't have to go down that side passage. In fact, I made pretty sure they wouldn't want to because they'd learn of the goblin legends and superstitions of the place, and of the description of a monster that matches a Beholder. Their main goal for this quest was in a different direction. The party decides to go down that side passage anyway. Well, if you're low level and you go walking into dangerous places in my world, you get what you get. As I recall the Beholder killed them all. I don't remember anyone escaping from that particular incident. Everyone gets to re-roll.
Anyway - the world is dangerous and lowbies can and do encounter things they can't beat. If they try to fight them, they're probably dead. Escaping is the better option in that circumstance. But all of us who play in these games like it that way. I'd rather have to roll a new character every week than play in a game where the DM was fudging to keep me alive for some story or what have you.
Our stories tend to develop around the characters as they get up in levels. At level 1, you're a nobody, really. As the characters level I spin the lore around them. At high levels the characters are much more a part of the story, though that doesn't mean they can't be killed.
But even if I have some great story in mind, I don't force the PCs into it. If I had a plan for a PC and he dies, oh well. Next plan. I can come up with something else. If my storyline depends on the PCs going into room X and they don't go in, then oh well - I'll come up with something else.
Which brings me to my final point/question in this rambling message: if the story in your game is that controlling, what do you do when the characters just don't do the things that you expect or want them to do to keep the story going? Do you try to funnel them into that path? It seems like you'd have to at least to some degree if the main focus is to keep on a particular storyline. Otherwise the characters might run off and do something else entirely.
I do have storylines running through my game, but it's also very open ended. If my storyline centers around the actions of some dark cult on the outskirts of a city, and the PCs suddenly decide they don't like that city and they're on the first ship south to the jungles, well then that's where they go. The storyline about the cult goes on the backburner or gets scrapped entirely while I develop a new storyline about cannibals who use paralyzing blow guns, or whatever. End up creating a lot of stories on the fly :)
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As someone who has, as a DM, over the past 6 years had 85 PC kills to his name, I'll tell you what I feel.
If they don't think anything will kill them, they won't play correctly (unless you have a really nice group). I roll out in the open, and let the dice fall as they may. If I need to flub a roll, I do so only if it's a save-or-die situation not caused by stupidity.
Why? I used to watch players try and accomplish any act, no matter how foolish or rediculous, just to be met with barely an HP gone. They were fearless, and while it was fun for them, for the rest of us who prefered to actually have "fear" or "common sense" or adhere to "physics", it meant we chastised ourselves for no pay off. So I let in character deaths, and feel that's the proper way to game (allowing some flubs here and there).
The true question, then, is if you are going to let ressurections and when the PC should be rotated out of the game. There are character deaths that are caused by useless characters. And nothing sucks more than playing a character who is useless but just can't leave (the mortal coil). This happens. Someone thinks "Hey, my Shujenja/Rogue/Druid will be amazing when I hit level 12"... then level 5 hits, they hate playing that character and want him to leave.
Some DM's who feel that the storyline means more will say "Well, you can't die and better just make lemonade from lemons... even though you're not achieving anything [game wise] and possibly not enjoying the RP to stretch out 7 levels." This situation would be solved with character death. It means the player has learned a lesson, and will probably make a better character (game wise and RP wise) for later, achieving a more well rounded game experience.
There is the flip side though. While most of my players (90%) feared death and didn't want to lose their characters, one of them felt he had to try every character possible, and "accidentally" [read: on purpose] would screw up and die. The answer? He eventually played a barbarian with tons of hit points and shot himself in the foot (and lived). I fluked out and didn't have to deal with it anymore, but it's still a downside of my method that needs to be watched for.
Once we were called to a tavern by messages from our companions and when we realized that nobody of us had written any messages, it was obviously that someone had tricked us. Locating snipers on the roofs outside we made a plan to distract them so our fighters could reach and disable them. Once the first one came through the door he was jump by a blackguard from the taverns roof which the gm had maximized to deal massive damage with a single blow and nothing else. The poor level 6 character never saw the 180 points of damage coming.
That just sucked.
The same gm sent the group into the tomb of horrors (I wasn't there that day) and made great efforts to describe the sphere of anhilation in the doorway as a teleportation device. The whole party anhilated themselves one after the other and the gm had the laugh of his life.
Obviously, I don't play there anymore. ^^
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Anyway - the world is dangerous and lowbies can and do encounter things they can't beat. If they try to fight them, they're probably dead. Escaping is the better option in that circumstance. But all of us who play in these games like it that way. I'd rather have to roll a new character every week than play in a game where the DM was fudging to keep me alive for some story or what have you.
Our stories tend to develop around the characters as they get up in levels. At level 1, you're a nobody, really. As the characters level I spin the lore around them. At high levels the characters are much more a part of the story, though that doesn't mean they can't be killed.
But even if I have some great story in mind, I don't force the PCs into it. If I had a plan for a PC and he dies, oh well. Next plan. I can come up with something else. If my storyline depends on the PCs going into room X and they don't go in, then oh well - I'll come up with something else.
Which brings me to my final point/question in this rambling message: if the story in your game is that controlling, what do you do when the characters just don't do the things that you expect or want them to do to keep the story going? Do you try to funnel them into that path? It seems like you'd have to at least to some degree if the main focus is to keep on a particular storyline. Otherwise the characters might run off and do something else entirely.
I do have storylines running through my game, but it's also very open ended. If my storyline centers around the actions of some dark cult on the outskirts of a city, and the PCs suddenly decide they don't like that city and they're on the first ship south to the jungles, well then that's where they go. The storyline about the cult goes on the backburner or gets scrapped entirely while I develop a new storyline about cannibals who use paralyzing blow guns, or whatever. End up creating a lot of stories on the fly :)
I don't consider my games controlling at all. In fact, if anything they go the exact opposite...Its primarily character driven. That being said, there is a certain amount of responsibility on behalf of the player to 'play the game' within the context of 'the game'...
by that I mkean, If Im running "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" and the party doesnt want to try and thwart Strahd....but instead desires to leave Barovia and wander down to some other hole in the wall....and slay a few Goblins....Then what are we doing?
Take any Adventure Path Paizo creates...There is a certain 'expectation' that the players 'want' to play that game. That is no diferent than a DM creating a campaign. The players want to play 'that game' otherwise they wouldnt be there. You can refer to it as railroading, or funneling...or linear storytelling...or whatever term you wish. The rough outline is there for the players to follow...the manner they follow it is all theirs.
Any game of D&D isnt about the 'life' of Joe the barbarian...but rather 'why these particular adventurers have gotten together'. I put it to you that there really isnt ANY RPG that just keeps it 100% free flow, otherwise why would a party get together?...They wouldnt. A Wizard would studying spells...a Cleric would work for his church...A Fighter would work for the army...etc...
If the party is all about...lets go and do what we want...and not about lets play the adventures created...then its up to the DM to get creative and find reasons for them to WANT to do the adventure hes created...;)
Character Hooks ;)
to refer back to you example of the 'lowbies' going down the path to the fabled Beholder.
The diference in my campaigns, would be the monsters aren't Static. They are Fluid. A 1st level party would never be put in the position where they would run into a Beholder....The party would be presented opportunities to adventure on adventures of appropriate risk to their level.
I get no statisfaction for a party kill. I dont. I'm the DM, I have the power and control of the game. I can put whatever monster I want wherever I want. What joy would I get for seeing the party get trashed? I see no purpose in it. Its far more exciting for me to put in a very difficult encounter and watching the party think their way through it, and come up with a tactical manner to defeat it. They laugh and cut up and enjoy the game.
I dont know, thats just my opinion. It kinda rubs me the wrong way to hear DM's who gloat about (and Im not saying this is you ;) ) TPK's...like it was that hard to do. Sheesh, when you create the adventure...how hard is it to do that?
So the players adventure, knowing that if they want to die they can, if they dont...then they won't...but if they do something silly or totally absurd or even make a few bad roles....something WILL happen to them, and it won't be a pat on the butt and a bedtime story. Waking up in jail with no equipment or having to relearn how to speak with several teeth missing and taking that -4 to Cha is just a great...if not greater 'danger' than merely rolling up another character.
my 2 cents anyway.
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So far, this has been a very interesting discussion and I wanted to throw my own little wrinkle into it.
I've also turned into something of an indulgent DM with hardly a player death under my belt. The only character death that's happened in any of my campaigns was my wife's character, and that was largely because she had a death wish.
But here's the thing: at least one of my players is far more experienced in the game than I am, and he plays to outsmart the DM. He's a fine roleplayer and believes in doing everything by the book, but his knowledge of the rules and his ability to effortlessly metagame what he does makes it very difficult to challenge him with adventure paths like Savage Tide. I can ratchet up the challenges, sure, but supercharging all the encounters is unfair to the other players.
I've seen a few people in this thread talk about killing players for doing things that are stupid. What happens when a player does things that are just a little too smart? How do you kill a player that knows more than you do? Should you go out of your way to make every battle a deadly nightmare just so they have a real challenge? Where do you draw the line between coddling players and being pushed around by them?
My view on a role playing game is more like the players are the protagonists in a fantasy novel and we are writing the story together....Evidently not a George R.R. Martin novel, then, or you'd be killing off the protagonists as fast as you could introduce new ones!
LOLZ
I'll avoid discussing deaths within story limits. These are okay whenever appropriate.
I try to avoid unnecesary PC deaths, but I'm not shy to kill when I smell the opportunity. With power gamer in group you can guess who is the preferred target... A person who played an elven sorceress and assigned all his scores so that his only bad roll out of the six goes to Constitution so that he has a 5/-3 in hope that he can reroll soon (the rest wasn't under 15) really asked for that and guess what three following rerolls (each graced with new suicide of course) looked like :/ If only that was the only example...
My group uses a few warnings before permadeath, but if the person keeps playing stupid the result is inevitable.
Personally I'd never go looking for a rulebook with lightning strikes. I'd simply let him do something dumb and turn it against him.
And there's nothing like a time proven brick 'suddenly' falling on a disruptive PC's head from nearest roof... tree... or whatever. If it sounds unbelievable the message stop pissing off the DM gets clearer.
I've seen a few people in this thread talk about killing players for doing things that are stupid. What happens when a player does things that are just a little too smart? How do you kill a player that knows more than you do? Should you go out of your way to make every battle a deadly nightmare just so they have a real challenge? Where do you draw the line between coddling players and being pushed around by them?
Give me an example of 'Too smart' and I'll try to make something up...
Once we were called to a tavern by messages from our companions and when we realized that nobody of us had written any messages, it was obviously that someone had tricked us. Locating snipers on the roofs outside we made a plan to distract them so our fighters could reach and disable them. Once the first one came through the door he was jump by a blackguard from the taverns roof which the gm had maximized to deal massive damage with a single blow and nothing else. The poor level 6 character never saw the 180 points of damage coming.
That just sucked.The same gm sent the group into the tomb of horrors (I wasn't there that day) and made great efforts to describe the sphere of anhilation in the doorway as a teleportation device. The whole party anhilated themselves one after the other and the gm had the laugh of his life.
Obviously, I don't play there anymore. ^^
There's a big difference between "PC death as part of the game" and "deliberately attempting to kill PCs." You were right to leave.
The basic idea is that adventuring is a "high-risk, high-reward" activity; PCs become powerful and gain treasure because they overcome difficult challenges, not because they're "special." High rewards without correspondingly high risk become stale; if there's no real challenge, then there's no real sense of accomplishment.
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There's a big difference between "PC death as part of the game" and "deliberately attempting to kill PCs." You were right to leave.The basic idea is that adventuring is a "high-risk, high-reward" activity; PCs become powerful and gain treasure because they overcome difficult challenges, not because they're "special." High rewards without correspondingly high risk become stale; if there's no real challenge, then there's no real sense of accomplishment.
I'd like to clarify my position a bit in relation to your comments. I do "deliberately attempt to kill PCs" but only within the confines of the established encounter - in other words, the creatures go all out (within the reasonable application of their abilities) to survive a battle - a few examples might help illustrate (these all actually happened):
1) A charismatic general gets charged at the start of a battle, the character is brought low at his feet by his minions with the PCs still over 100ft away. Grinning, he steps forward, hefts his heavy pick and plants it firmly into the skull of the dying PC. His troops cheer wildly, and the PCs crap their pants.
2) A ravenous bulette emerges from the ground, attacking the most appealing target. Everything is hurting it, so it just mindlessly focuses on a single target.
3) A gray ooze attacks the only target in the room - a sorcerer. As the sorcerer falls unconscious, a nearby battle between 12 creatures gains the attention of the ooze. The meek heartbeat of the fallen kobold sorcerer is no longer appetizing, so it unwittingly spares the victim to investigate the thundering battle.
4) A yuan-ti ignan guards a secret entry into a temple which the PCs have used to leave previously. Upon re-entering, a battle sorcerer charges atop his Winter Wolf familiar. The familiar bites the ignan dealing hefty bite/cold damage. The ignan, knowing the threat of the large mount and disliking the cold-type creature spends its full attacks on the wolf, dropping it in two rounds. Kudos to the PC, he never once mentioned how low on hp the familiar was, he took it in stride.
Generally speaking, if my monsters have an Intelligence higher than 11 they will start using the "best" tactics in the game. From 8-11 they will use basic tactics and take advantage of situations. Getting lower they start to get more impulsive. I allow myself more time to plan an intelligent creatures turn, and much less for an unintelligent one.
What I also don't agree with, and I think this is more along your point, is deliberately creating a situation that means certain death for the PCs is not fun and a bad move as a DM. I admit I have done it once or twice, but always for story reasons and always with prior consent from the player. I have used unwinnable encounters, but I always balance them with NPCs who are unconcerned with the fate of the PCs or in a way that drives the story forward, and I am very careful with killing PCs unless it becomes very clear (sometimes litereally made so by me) the encounter is unwinnable and the PCs push forward anyway. But if the 1st level PCs rush off to assassinate the 20th level King, they deserve whats coming to them. But even then, unless he is bloodthirsty, they might wind up in prison. It is best to keep players guessing about their fate.
There was one time when a player permanently left the group because of disinterest, and rather than keep her character going I just let her be killed the next time she was threatened. Funny part was the PCs just left her body lying in an alley, and eventually it was used in a murder trial as character evidence.
I think by "too smart" he means a player who's trying to min/max, when the DM and other characters aren't necessarily trying to do so.
Killing said character accomplishes nothing- the next one will pose the same problem.
If one player is playing "at a different level" than the others, or even the DM, then the correct solution is to ask that player to tone it down.
Power gaming is like a volume knob. Not every speaker goes as high as every other, but all have the power to be played more softly.
Get the person off to the side, explain the problem politely, and ask that they tone it down. Explain that the other players and/or the DM aren't playing at that same Power-game level.
If he cooperates, fine. If not, ask him to leave the game.
But murdering his characters one after the other isn't really going to accomplish anything.
-S
What happens when a player does things that are just a little too smart?
I enjoy the ride. I had one player who consistently derailed all of my adventure plots, who took seemingly insane risks and got away with them (because he had incredibly shrewd judgement, despite the rash demeanor he affected), who had this knack for mentally sifting seemingly irrelevant clues and suddently making that leap, and killing the supposedly "secret" bad guy in an alley before his schemes even got underway. I know he wasn't cheating -- I'd write the adventures myself, and pull them out right before the session started -- he was just a very good player.
I've never had more fun gaming than when he was a participant. He'd make me sweat -- often I had to reroute entire adventures mid-stream just to try and keep up with him -- but, man, it was a lot of fun! Now, when I DM for more passive players, I find it gets kind of boring sometimes.
I think by "too smart" he means a player who's trying to min/max, when the DM and other characters aren't necessarily trying to do so.
Killing said character accomplishes nothing- the next one will pose the same problem.
If one player is playing "at a different level" than the others, or even the DM, then the correct solution is to ask that player to tone it down.
Power gaming is like a volume knob. Not every speaker goes as high as every other, but all have the power to be played more softly.
Get the person off to the side, explain the problem politely, and ask that they tone it down. Explain that the other players and/or the DM aren't playing at that same Power-game level.
If he cooperates, fine. If not, ask him to leave the game.But murdering his characters one after the other isn't really going to accomplish anything.
-S
I hoped for a few concrete examples upon which we'd show model solutions.
And killing one character after another is not what I'd recommend, but our group doesn't want to get rid of the player... he just keeps us wondering why the hell does he have to make an idiot out of himself once every two sessions or so.
The person I mentioned is actually unable to powergame properly.
As we alter in DMing we actually started contests to develope the most outrageous trap for him to fall into... Last time he actually engaged a level 15 lich (and the DM made sure that he'd know that he's THAT powerful) with him playing bard 5 / cleric 4. And no, the bard was not his choice to play, he lost two sorcerers after being dumb.
I think our group is a bit specific in the fact that we keep even disruptive characters in game. The rest only learned not to count on them to do anything good.
Idiots are keepers. I don't mind comic relief.
But disrupters, are different. Someone who's so far ahead of the curve power wise because of his specific (and meaningful) choices in PC generation that he's not only the star player, he's the Sun, the moon, and the sky, while the other PC's are mere acorns on the ground, watching the grandeur.
</thread hi-jack>
-S